My teen is obsessed with being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD/Austism and I am exhausted

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

Not OP, but where did this come from? What in the OP made you even suggest this?

NP. There is actually a statistically significant overlap between people who are trans and people who have ASD. Maybe that was it.

That’s not enough to suggest it. Armchair psychiatrists are so harmful!

PP asked a question, she didn't suggest that OP's kid is trans! That's far from being an armchair psychiatrist and if that question was somehow harmful to OP or somebody else, then they have bigger problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We finally have an initial appointment with our pediatrician tomorrow and she is spun up about the fact that they might not find anything wrong, which to her means that they are not listening to her. It is a conversation that never, ever ends.

This is a smart kid, incredibly able to make conversation with peers and adults. She suffers from some lack of confidence, which I frankly find more concerning because she could excel at so many things.

She is also stubborn as h#L! and is bound and determined that she's going to be diagnosed with something. Part of this is from her therapist, or what she is perceiving that she is hearing from her therapist.

I want to be supportive, but if she would put as much energy into anything as she has put into this effort we would have terraformed Mars already.

She could be a little more organized and since she was a child she has resisted going into any activity where she has to start as a beginner - she wants to be perfect from the start. She gets A's and B's, has lots of friends and parents uniformly like her.

I love her SO much but as I said, this conversation JUST GOES ON.

The bolded sentences perfectly describe my son - who is autistic, was diagnosed at 11 (he presents more typical to the way a girl with ASD presents), and is also academically gifted (so 2E) and thrives on the rigid routines at school so gets high grades. No one believed that anything could possibly be "wrong" because my son is "so smart, is insightful, gets along with everyone" that any issues we had must be attributable to a parenting issue. The things that stand out to me - the stubbornness and the energy to terraform Mars if she could focus are actually strong indicators of ASD - or they can be.

Turns out he has ASD, and some pretty significant handicaps related to that.

A pediatrician can't diagnose ASD though, but can refer you to a provider that can do a neuropsych evaluation.

[Anonymous]

The bolded above also perfectly describes my typical kid.
Maybe something is wrong, maybe it isn’t and I hope you get your answers. High school kids these days are obsessed with diagnosis. My own claims she has OCD (she doesn’t). So many of her friends are on Zoloft it is shocking…like more than not. So I understand the frustration.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

NP. I have a daughter with a lot of similarities to OP's daughter. PP, can you talk more about how you emotionally stretch and the type of self-care that increases capacity for dealing with this? Mentally, I l would love to do this. But the reality is that my personality is such that I find my daughter's rant a huge emotional weight that I can't effectively deal with.

I can try!

A lot of it is just those little things we all know we should do but often don't. Sufficient sleep, daily exercise, nourishing food, walks, doing fun things for ourselves that help us feel like whole people, taking mini-breaks throughout the day when we feel overly tired or overwhelmed, time with friends, etc. Before DC went to therapy, I wasn't doing these things really consistently because I didn't realize how much my moods were negatively impacting my child's mental health. When I discovered this, all these little things became a huge priority. Also Brene brown has a chapter about calm in one of her older books, gifts of imperfection, that I read several times over.

PP mentioned that a lot of our struggles with hearing others' emotions stem from our own childhoods where our emotions were invalidated. For me this was totally true and I have been working on it in therapy. I am doing dialectical behavioral therapy to learn self-validation in addition to emotional regulation and distress tolerance and it has been amazing. The results that have come from just learning to identify and then just be mindful about emotions, thoughts, and feelings are kind of magical.

I also learned something from a parenting book that seems obvious but for me was pretty revelatory: I don't have to adopt my kid's moods and feelings. Just because my child is freaking out about something doesn't mean I have to let that impact how I feel. "You don't have to go in there" is how the book phrased it. I listen, I try to understand, I sympathize, but I don't get anxious or irritable just because that's how my child is feeling.

It took at least a year to change and I am so not perfect about it. But I seriously had such an irritable and inpatient personality before and now my husband is constantly telling me he cannot believe how patient I am. He can't handle her emotional dumping. Which is actually okay because she has me (and her therapist).

We have had issues with her depending on me too heavily when she is in crisis mode. But the way her therapist is having us deal with it is not for her to just deal with things alone (though she is learning to identify trouble emotions and self-soothe before the situation gets unbearable). Instead, I approach her on an almost daily basis and ask her how she is doing (red, yellow, or green) so she has some support and guidance if she needs it. This way she doesn't need me *immediately*, which is good because no parent can do that all the time do that all the time (because maybe I am in the middle of getting myself some food so I can better emotionally regulate).

So it's a mixture of handling the issues so they are rarely *that* hard to deal with, and expanding my own emotional capacity for support.

This does seem like a lot to do for a kid, but honestly now I think of it as doing it for myself as much as for DC. Life is just easier for mewhen I live it in a way such that my kids' moods don't throw me for a loop.

I'm PP with the autistic daughter that sounds like a twin of OP, and that was really helpful to me. Thank you!!!

[Anonymous]

OP, my 14 yr old DD also seems convinced that she’s got ADHD and it’s the reason she is always in trouble or that he grades are slipping. She uses it as an excuse for everything. It seems as if a large number of kids at her school claim to have that diagnosis (I have no idea if it’s true or not). She also is a tall tale teller/exaggerater since she was young and incredibly dramatic over everything. I’m exhausted too.

I’ve had her screened with several pediatricians over the years and all said she just had “healthy energy” but I finally got off a waitlist for her to have a neuropsych evaluation at a place recommended on DCUM and we are waiting for those results.

Just go ahead and get one. If she does have ADHD, maybe she needs more support with those issues. The only way to know for sure is to get the testing. But it’s super expensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

Not OP, but where did this come from? What in the OP made you even suggest this?

NP. There is actually a statistically significant overlap between people who are trans and people who have ASD. Maybe that was it.

Yes, that. And she seems to be seeking belonging; as part of a group.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for the responses. Lots to think about and consider.

To be clear, the appointment with the ped was meant as a screening/what to do next, and it was very helpful. We spent almost an hour with the doctor and then my daughter and I talked for almost an hour afterward. There's no indication that she needs further evaluation for ADD/ADHD/ASD at this time - at this time being a key part of the phrase.

She definitely has anxiety and I think it's been worse than she was opening up about, hence the hyper focus on getting a diagnosis. So we've got some strategies and ideas to focus on that first. I don't know if they anxiety is causing the obsessiveness or if that's separate.

Overall, I think we ended today on a positive note. Thanks to everyone that responded.

[Anonymous]

Gosh, I wish you would get her tested. We thought it was clear our daughter, who sounds a lot like yours, was not autistic -- she had friends, she cared about feelings, she held conversations with people, adults like her, she was a rule follower, etc. But she shares with your daughter some of the same perfectionism, not wanting to start a new skill unless she'd be good at it, obsessing over her interests, ability to have conversations beyond her years (she talks like an old man sometimes, knows lots of big words, etc), she's smart, and so so stubborn -- she has mental blocks about some things.

Our pediatrician never recommended getting her evaluated. We were getting her CBT therapy to help with anxiety and that therapist, after a pretty long time, eventually recommended we do an evaluation. It's so easy to miss autism in girls. It presents differently and autistic girls can be very social!

If you have the money, I do recommend getting evaluated if you can fwiw. jmho

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, I wish you would get her tested. We thought it was clear our daughter, who sounds a lot like yours, was not autistic -- she had friends, she cared about feelings, she held conversations with people, adults like her, she was a rule follower, etc. But she shares with your daughter some of the same perfectionism, not wanting to start a new skill unless she'd be good at it, obsessing over her interests, ability to have conversations beyond her years (she talks like an old man sometimes, knows lots of big words, etc), she's smart, and so so stubborn -- she has mental blocks about some things.

Our pediatrician never recommended getting her evaluated. We were getting her CBT therapy to help with anxiety and that therapist, after a pretty long time, eventually recommended we do an evaluation. It's so easy to miss autism in girls. It presents differently and autistic girls can be very social!

If you have the money, I do recommend getting evaluated if you can fwiw. jmho

I’m glad somebody else said it because I didn’t want to!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

+1 and I can say from experience that one of the things that gets in the way of parents supporting their kids emotionally is that many of us got little, if any, emotional support as children. When you have that really irritated, almost angry, response to hearing your kid emote or struggle, that's a sign that you were probably emotionally neglected as a child and it's going to be hard to overcome that. But it is absolutely possible and worth it. Learning to give my kid what I never had has been painful at times but has paid so many dividends. Not just in my relationship with my child, but in my relationship with myself.

Also, specifically regarding the validation-seeking that OP is dealing with, I have found that as I become more comfortable and understanding of my own negative emotions, that makes it easier to validate my kid's negative feelings (fear, insecurity mostly) and it tends to short-circuit that feedback loop of needing constant validation. I think one roadblock parents run into (or really anyone dealing with this) is that the person comes to you wanting you to validate their anxiety. Well, no one really wants to validate anxiety, especially when you think it might be overblown or that there is a different, healthier response to be having. But if you dig underneath the anxiety and learn to validate what's going on to cause the anxiety, it's easier. Like for OP, it sounds like one thing that is happening is that her daughter is struggling with identity -- she wants to know who she is, what kind of person she is. This is almost certainly tied to fear about the future after high school and is really common and understandable for teens. Dig into that! You can use the ADHD/ASD diagnosis process to explore it. Ask her to tell you how her brain is responding to stress and what makes her feel it's likely to be ADHD or ASD that causes that response. Tell her how your brain works similarly or differently. Maybe explore things like meditation of mindfulness while you go through the diagnostic process, which will help her no matter what her diagnosis is. Make her feel really and truly heard on this issue.

If she keeps coming back to you with it, that's an indication that she is trying to get you to understand something (or maybe even trying to get herself to understand something) and doesn't feel like it's gotten through. See if you can identify it and really listen and connect over it. You may find this is what it takes to keep these conversations from going around and around over and over.

I'm 10:32. That's really an amazing spot-on description. How did you learn to deal with these issues within yourself?

I'm 11:49 and I didn't add to my other comment something that has been helpful: parenting myself. It sounds sooooo stupid that I'm not even going to describe the procedure here, but you can look it up on YouTube. I think it has been decently helpful for me, though I'd say DBT has been the real game-changer.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of that out.

[Anonymous]

OP - as a parent of two young people with ADHD/ dyslexia and anxiety, I can assure you that proper diagnosis is usually very rigorous and requires a lot of corroboration between home and school teachers who know your child well.

Hopefully, everything is within normal limits as some have suggested.

Vanderbilt forms - are highly detailed for both home and school contexts. A diagnosis of ADHD/ ADD requires a lot of overlap, which good pediatricians and psychiatrists know how to interpret.

An educational psych evaluation by an educational psychologist (number of excellent ones in DMV) can be very helpful for giving insight into learning differences and strengths. Even if your child turns out to have no major learning differences, it is extremely helpful to know your child’s cognitive strengths and weakness and what helps them the most.

It is extremely common got people with ADHD/ ADD to have coexisting anxieties/ social anxieties/ depression and/or other learning differences such as dyslexia, dysgraphia and slow processing speed. Good educational psych evaluations can help you and your pediatrician to have a better idea if they are present and how impact your child’s cognition and Learning.

If your teen does get diagnosed with ADHD/ ADD, it can take a while to find the right medicine and dose for them. It is best to start wi5 meds that have lowest rates of side effects such Ritalin and Concerta (long acting Ritalin) that have been around the longest. I would resist attempts to start child on newer medicines with higher rates of severe side effects such as Focalin.

Managing ADHD/ ADD takes a multipronged approach:
1. Adequate sleep and sleep hygiene - many with adhd have troubles slowing down their overactive brains at night so many need melatonin or some other sleep aid. It is good to keep bedrooms as peaceful as possible.
2. Good diet with adequate protein plus fresh fruit and veggies.
3. Executive function aids - you should communicate closely with your learning specialist and educational psychologist to determine the best ways to help your child self organize and manage school work loads.
4. Medicine - most children and youth with ADHD/ ADD do much better with medicine and have much lower rates of future substance abuse related to self medicating anxieties. Unmedicated youth with ADHD are at much greater risk for both substance abuse and bullying due to impulsive behavior and blurting unwise stuff out that can be misinterpreted as antisocial or deliberately offensive.
5. Hyper focus - often have certain subjects and activities they obsess over and hyper focus on.
6. Transitioning. Often have trouble transitioning from one activity or way of thinking to another, which can be interpreted as being stubborn. They often need help transitioning and becoming more flexible about their ways of thinking.


Children and youth with ADHD/ ADD have many many strengths that need to be celebrated and cultivated.
They are often kind, empathetic, brilliant with lateral thinking and creative problem solving, big picture thinkers, athletic, risk takers and more.

So best wishes for unlocking the major keys to your DD’s cognition and best ways for learning and coping with the rigors and challenges of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, I wish you would get her tested. We thought it was clear our daughter, who sounds a lot like yours, was not autistic -- she had friends, she cared about feelings, she held conversations with people, adults like her, she was a rule follower, etc. But she shares with your daughter some of the same perfectionism, not wanting to start a new skill unless she'd be good at it, obsessing over her interests, ability to have conversations beyond her years (she talks like an old man sometimes, knows lots of big words, etc), she's smart, and so so stubborn -- she has mental blocks about some things.

Our pediatrician never recommended getting her evaluated. We were getting her CBT therapy to help with anxiety and that therapist, after a pretty long time, eventually recommended we do an evaluation. It's so easy to miss autism in girls. It presents differently and autistic girls can be very social!

If you have the money, I do recommend getting evaluated if you can fwiw. jmho

OP here - thank you for your input. Can I ask what type of evaluation it was? And what was the recommendation afterward? Medication? More therapy?

Part of what I am struggling with here is that no one - not the pediatrician, her therapist of some time now, any teacher, counselor, instructor, etc. has ever recommended any testing or evaluation. So I am left thinking what exactly is the goal/what exactly that we are trying to achieve? That is not clear to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, I wish you would get her tested. We thought it was clear our daughter, who sounds a lot like yours, was not autistic -- she had friends, she cared about feelings, she held conversations with people, adults like her, she was a rule follower, etc. But she shares with your daughter some of the same perfectionism, not wanting to start a new skill unless she'd be good at it, obsessing over her interests, ability to have conversations beyond her years (she talks like an old man sometimes, knows lots of big words, etc), she's smart, and so so stubborn -- she has mental blocks about some things.

Our pediatrician never recommended getting her evaluated. We were getting her CBT therapy to help with anxiety and that therapist, after a pretty long time, eventually recommended we do an evaluation. It's so easy to miss autism in girls. It presents differently and autistic girls can be very social!

If you have the money, I do recommend getting evaluated if you can fwiw. jmho

OP here - thank you for your input. Can I ask what type of evaluation it was? And what was the recommendation afterward? Medication? More therapy?

Part of what I am struggling with here is that no one - not the pediatrician, her therapist of some time now, any teacher, counselor, instructor, etc. has ever recommended any testing or evaluation. So I am left thinking what exactly is the goal/what exactly that we are trying to achieve? That is not clear to me.

Different poster here. The ASD diagnosis for my son has provided some insight into strategies that are most likely to be effective when my son needs to learn something that triggers his sensory challenges.

It has also helped us understand him better, and find ways to help him understand himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

Not OP, but where did this come from? What in the OP made you even suggest this?

NP. There is actually a statistically significant overlap between people who are trans and people who have ASD. Maybe that was it.

Yes, that. And she seems to be seeking belonging; as part of a group.

Maybe not trans, but my neurodiverse dd, and practically all of her friends (so nd, some not) identify as LGBTQ. And yes, because they want to belong to a group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please go read on ADDItude what some common ADHD symptoms are in young women before you write her off.
Rejection sensitivity
Perfectionism
Difficulty starting or finishing tasks
Procrastination followed by hyperfocus
Being clumsy - bumping into things, not having sense of her body in space
Etc.

Maybe it’s TikTok, maybe it’s the pandemic, maybe it’s real.

I’m one of the many adult women who’s pretty sure I have ADHD (and probably mild ASD) but never got diagnosed and probably never will. This list is basically my whole personality. I don’t even know what would be left if I didn’t have this list of traits! Um always torn between wondering how life would have been better and/or easier if I’d had support, and feeling it all turned out well despite the lack. DD is now hoping to go through the diagnosis process, and it all seems like such an expensive nightmare in this area. I understand her need but still have been putting it off.

OP, when DD gets fixated on something, I usually try to model ways of thinking as part of my response. Something like, “I imagine it will be a great relief to hear what the docs have to say. But unfortunately, nothing to do except be patient till we get the report in a few weeks.” Said lovingly and not dismissively, of course. We are facing a big school decision in a year, and every time DD brings it up (often!), I go with some variation of “That will be a big choice, but we’ve still got a year. Lots of things can change in a year. I recommend we try for anything that interests you so we have the choices. But you won’t have to make the actual choice till then.” Over time, it can become a model for how they talk to themselves in the face of their own anxiety.